


I, Finnian

by sunshinestealer



Category: Kuroshitsuji | Black Butler
Genre: Experimentation, Frankenstein-ish, Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-12-20
Updated: 2014-12-20
Packaged: 2018-03-02 11:21:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,027
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2810369
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sunshinestealer/pseuds/sunshinestealer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The story of how Finnian came to be, with the help of a scientist who styled himself as a god.</p>
<p>(Note: This was written before the events of the Green Witch arc, so it's a definite canon divergence.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	I, Finnian

In our Lord's year of 1830, a male babe was born to Lord and Lady. Maes, both members of the Flemish gentry living in England. They named the child Henrik, and he displayed a prodigious talent for the natural sciences that already by the age of nineteen he had completed his undergraduate university education. He continued to acquire his Doctorate and other degrees and in time, he was forty five years old and wandering from town to town as a Physician.

Doctor Maes' family connexions could have appointed him as the personal physician to a gentleman or lady, yet the doctor had always refused these introductions. He preferred to be away from Lord and Lady Maes, and their talk of the arts and humanities over the sciences. In his younger days, Henrik had dined with some of the greatest artistic intelligentsia that the countries of France, Prussia, Belgium, Germany and Switzerland had to offer, yet he never found their company satisfying. He would have to search on his own for men such as himself, and he indeed wound up affiliated with the Church of Humanity, attending their seminars as he travelled via pony and trap to towns around the European continent. The British Association for the Advancement of Science also keenly accepted his application, although he was so rarely in England that his membership had to be re-negotiated via the post every few years.

The man was a polyglot, able to slip into the dialects of every obscure small town he found himself in, with his foundations in English, German, Dutch, and French. He set broken bones, attended difficult births and diagnosed the scarlet fever or cholera of the poor who could only give the doctor a pittance for his services. He saw many other doctors of his calibre as corrupt; asking for the highest wages and refusing to operate without a deposit already paid. Doctors ought to be out there saving lives, not attending to the hypochondriac fantasies of the wives of the noblemen, or looking into such silly pseudo-scientific principles as mesmerism. 

Hypnotism and other paranormal or spiritual sciences, trying to be brought into the respectable world of medicine with little testing and only the theatrical testimonies of those who wanted to believe, shilled by charlatans and snake-oil merchants irritated Doctor Maes to no end. It was purely fictitious, and he assumed it didn't even take years of medical and scientific experience to see through the veil peddled by the Spiritualists and their ilk. Purging demons and speaking to the dead... it was utter nonsense. Disbelief in such practices was simple common sense, a sentiment which was thrown aside the moment such ridiculous ideas sounded convincing to the masses.

Although Doctor Maes greatly preferred reading medical papers and didactical books published by his former colleagues, he had recently discovered a rather guilty pleasure. A novel supposed 'for ladies', as his mother put it – a cautionary tale about playing God, aptly subtitled _The Modern Prometheus_. Written by such a young talent too, the lady Mary Shelley. Doctor Maes had heard of her acquaintance with Lord Byron, as well as her interest in the electro-voltaic experiments of her lover Percy Bysshe Shelley at Oxford University, but little else. His mother also had in her collection a collection of essays by Mary Shelley's mother, the Lady Wollstonecraft, yet Henrik refused to look into them. One ladies' novel from his late mother's collection would be enough.

The story of _Frankenstein_ had frightened and fascinated him, utterly. It was simple to relate to the doctor, and heartbreaking to read the parts narrated by the monster itself, a repulsive creature borne of an unethical experiment. He read every translation he could get his hands on, to read between the lines and discover nuances that were perhaps better explained outside of the English language. As a doctor himself, Henrik could not help but think on subsequent re-readings about how Victor Frankenstein should not have been treated as such a villain for merely answering a question that many would fear to even ask.

One couple he had met in the Rhine province were particularly upset at their inability to have children. Doctor Maes had diagnosed the female as having an unfortunate gynaecological condition that caused severe uterine lesions and infertility, and her husband was similarly infertile, and victim to a hereditary disease.  

As Henrik laid on his bed in the boarding house that night, a well-thumbed copy of the novel laid upon his lap, he considered just how Mary Shelley's idea could be used to help society in a way – if we were to ignore the more sordid implications of bringing forth life in an artificial way and angering the gods. The barren couple could have a son or daughter created in their own image, who would be free of the diseases afflicting his or her parents. He thought of militaries who would prefer legions of automatons to battle, rather than the sad deaths of young, untrained boys acting as cannon fodder, merely defending their territories from invaders. As he knew, the Franco-Prussian war was raging right now, and certain towns he had visited were almost flooded with walking wounded from nearby skirmishes.

He had the skills in prostheses. He had attended lectures and seminars from some of the greatest medical craftsmen in Europe, in how to construct a proper ball and joint, how to use tiny mechanisms to animate fingers and toes... he had fitted a prosthesis or two in his time, when he had the materials to do so. 

But, these were merely spare parts. Any animal could learn to get by with a missing limb, either from trauma or a birth defect. Creating an entire body from scratch was a work of fiction, of course. He had heard of nothing but complications from risky operations in the transfusion of blood and other bodily parts, and medical scientists around Europe were still trying to figure out the reason why it happened. Some had philosophised that a man was supposed to only have the body that God created for him, and it was God's work why a missing fingertip would fall victim to necrosis if transplanted to the patient from a criminal or a cadaver. 

Dr. Maes did not believe in this idea of God. A human brain – and he had seen many in his day – was too big, and the mind was far too curious to simply settle for Godly explanations of the natural forces. He had seen thecaricatures of Darwin designed to mock what was potentially a fascinating and groundbreaking theory. He had not met the man himself, but Maes had read _On The Origin of Species_ and _The Descent of Man_ with great interest. 

Yet the book he continued to read with great interest was a work of speculative fiction. Although he knew that what Mary Shelley described was an impossibility, he knew as a scientist that there could be no harm in merely testing theories. He promised himself not to run from his creation(s) either, like the cowardly Dr. Frankenstein had done that stormy night. 

Doctor Maes dedicated a year or so of his life to collecting research on the mere possibility of reanimating life via electricity, or even the mechanical arts of creating a speaking, thinking, _living_ automaton – perhaps powered by steam, perhaps powered by a soul itself. 

He obtained a Japanese _karakuri ningyo_ , designed for theatrical displays, and so wonderfully intricate on the inside that he found himself learning much about the mechanical arts – yet an automaton would never be enough for his tastes. They were only facsimiles of humans, and their unblinking, painted visages would not be taken kindly to by society. Doctor Maes did not go back to the drawing board, but he did consider the skeleton and organ structure of a human, as well as the epidermis. An automaton could never mimic that, even if crafted by the masters in Paris of this era.

Perhaps one could acquire a child with a flexible mind and use mesmerism to make them truly believe that they _were_ an artificial creation, so convincingly that even the most sceptical would be swayed. No, thought the Doctor. It would be too cruel. 

After months of solitary study, much like the fictional Victor Frankenstein, Doctor Maes came out with a theory that he was ready to test with a combination of freshly-dead body parts, mechanical parts, and a specially crafted skeleton made from a lightweight resin that was hard as diamonds and would provide the framework of the entire body.

He spent so much of his time around bones, viscera and pickled organs these days, Doctor Maes thought he was going to lose his mind. But it was a necessary sacrifice, if his theory turned out to be true.

To be on the safe side, the doctor built four skeletons and bought enough black market organs for all of them. He was also able to find multiple bags of blood that were transported in a safe manner, and had not turned sour or clotted in any way. The blood had been drained from bodies by less scrupulous undertakers, particularly one in London who attached a messy handwritten note suggesting that Doctor Maes visit his funeral parlour some day. (The note had ended: “ _You will wind up here someday! That's the way of a funeral parlour, of course.”_ ) This undertaker didn't seem like a fellow one ought to get involved with, so the doctor shrugged and discarded the note.

Then, one evening in Bavaria, where the doctor had rented a large home, he began his experiments to breathe life into the bodies of his four precious sons. All of them were designed to be in their teenage years. If he had wanted a squalling infant, he would have taken his late parents' suggestion and married his second cousin all those years ago. But he hadn't, and she was now supping ambrosia as the wife of a lower English royal.

All of his boys were crafted in the same manner, but with different features, so as to be easy to distinguish. One boy had blond hair and blue eyes, another with brown hair and hazel eyes, one boy with black hair and dark brown eyes that appeared almost black, and finally, a boy with ginger hair and blue-green eyes.

He had not decided upon names yet, but he knew that perhaps they would be best represented by names from the country which they had been 'born' in. German names. Hans, Wilhelm, Johannes, and lastly, Siegfried. He did not want to be stereotypical and allocate them names based on where they looked like they came from; a Germanic name for the blond, a Balkan name for the two dark-haired boys, and a Celtic name for the redheaded boy. No, that would not do. The German names suited them best. 

They were now ripe to be given the gift of life. He had brought them forth from the clay, and yet he had to hope that they were not going to be the golems of Jewish legend. The doctor had visited an alchemical shop in the Jewish quarter of Prague only a few years before, and been mesmerised by these mystical tales of creating a loyal servant... He did not understand Hebrew, but had a brief conversation in snatches of Yiddish and German with the shop's proprietor, promising to one day return with a real life artificial human being.

Now, it looked like it was about to really happen. Doctor Maes' heart fluttered in anticipation of proving his theory. It had lodged into his mind somewhere that he was in fact, _right_ to combine medical transfusion with minimal use of the technology of automatons in the joints and skeleton. They would be strong and hopefully dependent upon their master – but able to be left to their own devices if their creator so willed it. 

And so, that night, Dr. Maes entered the room in which he would bring his creations to life, and become a god in their eyes. He only hoped they would love him as much as he did. 


End file.
